New Book Sponsored by Lichfield Folk Festival

Fallibroome Country Dance Collection Re-published

The English Folk Dance and Song Society has re-published, in a single volume, the six country dance collections originally compiled by the late Bernard Bentley, and known as The Fallibroome Collection.

The original books were published in the 1960s and 70s, but have been out of print for many years.

The new edition of The Fallibroome Collection , made by Nicolas Broadbridge, has newly reset tunes and rewritten dance instructions to suit modern practice, while preserving Bernard Bentley's dance transcriptions. An addition to this new collection is digital mages of the original eighteenth-century dance collections, from which the Fallibroome dances were selected.

The new collection also includes twelve dances composed by Bernard Bentley in eighteenth-century style, to a set of C ontretänze by Beethoven.

The dances in The Fallibroome Collection were selected by Bernard Bentley from the eighteenth-century dance collections made by John Playford ( The Dancing Master ), Young, Johnson, Thompson, Rutherford and others. These dances have long been enjoyed within the English folk dance revival.

Nicolas Broadbridge says, "This new edition of a well-loved collection of dances will hopefully bring these dances to the notice of a wider circle of English country dancers."

The Fallibroome Collection will be of significant interest to English country dancers, folk dance clubs, folk dance musicians, and dance and music historians.

The new edition of The Fallibroome Collection has been made possible with financial support from the Lichfield Folk Festival (Staffordshire Folk) and English Miscellany. The EFDSS is most grateful for this support.

Bernard Bentley , who died in 1993, was a Mancunian and a founder member of the Manchester Morris Men. He was an authority on the north-west English style of morris dancing, as well as a noted interpreter of English country dances. He lived at Fallibroome in Prestbury, Cheshire, hence the name of this collection of dances.

Nicolas Broadbridge is a dancer, teacher, researcher and musician whose previous publications include Purcell's Dancing Master and The Assembly Dances . 

“Lichfield Folk Festival” (otherwise known as Staffordshire Folk) is committed to supporting dance publications. In 2008 it sponsored local band Folkus Pocus’s new CD “Under no Illusion” available now from Folk Sales.